


An Important and Popular Fact

by LourdesDeath



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Alien Abduction, Aliens, Human Experimentation, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Surprise Ending, Torture, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 06:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18959512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LourdesDeath/pseuds/LourdesDeath
Summary: After a long day at work, Michael sees something strange in the sky. It turns out his dreams of meeting aliens don’t quite match up with the reality.





	An Important and Popular Fact

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to flightinflame and dope-butterflies for betaing, and to kezokino for their [absolutely stunning art](https://kezokino.tumblr.com/post/185131001500/it-wasnt-aliens-he-knows-it-aliens-wouldnt) of this :D

Michael sighs as he drives through the gates of the Blackwing compound. He had never liked Supervisor Friedkin, but Supervisor Adams is somehow worse. He has a hand in every aspect of the operation, from the stimulation given to the one subject currently in the compound, to the food in the cafeteria, even down to what ops everyone goes on and who is allowed to enter the various observation rooms. 

When Michael had first been invited to transfer to Blackwing, he’d expected aliens, thought he’d finally get confirmation of what he’d believed for so long, but instead he got an idiot for a boss followed by a dictator, not to mention all the stress when Icarus caused chaos to fill the compound, weird knights with giant scissors appearing, and Supervisor Friedkin’s disappearance.  

Glancing at the scented vent clips on his car that look like alien faces and smell like sandalwood, Michael feels his shoulders slumping. Supervisor Adams has been nitpicking everything he’s done lately, and today has been the worst of it all, with him giving Michael his last three incident reports back and saying they’d been filled in wrong, making him re-file the last three months of surveillance on Project Icarus, yelling at him for the lamp Michael kept on his desk that was the shape of a little flying saucer, and even for having a picture of a UFO in New Jersey as his work phone lock screen. The lamp is now in the back seat of his car, and his lock screen has been changed to one of the geometric designs that came on the phone. 

Michael’s day hadn’t gotten any better after that. His lunch had had a strange chemical aftertaste, like the tupperware he’d put it in had somehow leached something into his spaghetti. He’d considered getting something from the cafeteria, but the options were quiche or shrimp scampi, and no amount of hunger could make him want to risk the allergic reactions to either of those foods, so he’d put up with the terrible flavor in his meal and thrown out the container after he was done eating. 

He looks out over the horizon as he drives and sighs again, turning off his radio. Even his conspiracy theory podcasts aren’t enough to make him feel better right now. 

His phone rings and Michael considers ignoring it but he knows it’s work because it’s a weird techno tune that came on his phone instead of the theme from The X Files. Of course, with his luck it’ll be Supervisor Adams, and Michael fears that if he gets into any more trouble Supervisor Adams will do to him whatever it is he did to get rid of Supervisor Friedkin. 

“This is Lieutenant Assistent,” he says after fumbling for his phone and glancing down to find the green circle he has to swipe to answer a call. 

“Hello, Lieutenant.” 

“Is… Is everything alright, Supervisor Adams? I… Did I forget something at work, or…?” 

“Actually there’s something we need to discuss. I’d like you to come to my office tomorrow morning, first thing.” 

“Uh. Yes, sir—” 

Michael drops his phone when a high pitched noise stabs through the air. Slamming his foot on the brake pedal, he claps his hands over his ears, but the noise still blares around him. He manages to throw his car into park and grab the door latch so he can roll out onto the asphalt. 

The noise is just as bad outside, and Michael tries to look around to find the source of it. 

Far above the horizon, on the hill he had been driving towards, is a… thing. 

Michael knows it’s not a plane, knows it’s not a helicopter. He’s been on enough message boards, analyzed enough blurry footage to know when something isn’t… isn’t what it should be. It’s just hovering over the hilltop, giving Michael a good view of its appearance: it looks almost identical to the lamp that Supervisor Adams yelled at him for. 

There’s a tightness in his chest, halfway between terror and excitement, and he would shout with joy but the noise would drown it out if he could even get his lungs to work. 

In a split second it goes from above the hilltop that must be at least two miles away to above Michael’s head, the terrible, high pitched noise joined by a deep humming sound. 

The bottom of the UFO is bright, so bright that Michael closes his eyes and can still see it. His lifelong dream of meeting an alien is torn from his grasp by fear as the lights get brighter and brighter and the noises get louder and louder until his brain feels like it’s overloading with the sensory input. Michael only knows he’s screaming from the pain in his throat, like it’s being torn up by the light and the noise the way his brain is. His knees crash down onto the road except he feels something smooth beneath him instead of the roughness of the asphalt. 

Michael dares to open his eyes, and the road is gone, his car is gone, the horizon is gone. 

It’s pure white around him until he blinks and his vision seems to snap into focus. Everything feels oddly overlapped, like he’s looking at a magic eye picture, but there are definitely creatures around him. 

They’re at least eight feet tall, their skin a sickly yellow-green. They don’t have anything that looks like it could be a head, or a face, and they each have more limbs than Michael’s terrified brain can count, but the top of each one flashes different colors for a moment. 

Something warm and damp wraps around his arm. It’s not quite a hand—it has way too many fingers to be that—but it pulls him closer to the creatures. Their scent fills his nostrils, and it’s like saltwater mixed with rotting flowers. 

Michael is thrown to the ground in front of one of the things and he cowers there. He can remember once saying in a forum that he wouldn’t be afraid if he was abducted by aliens, that he’d want to show them the best of Earth’s creatures, but an appendage brushes against his shoulder and he finds himself whimpering, pleas for mercy and to be sent home already leaving his lips. 

The aliens don’t have eyes but he can feel that they’re watching him. Michael knows it won’t stop there. 

He’s dragged through a door and thrown onto a table that’s hovering a couple feet off the ground. The metal is cold, even through Michael’s clothing. 

One of the aliens comes closer and Michael tries to back away, but something rises up from the table, wrapping around his wrists and ankles and pulling him back down. Another one traps his head against the table. 

An alien on his left holds something up with its tentacles. Michael thinks it could be a sphere made of a glass-like substance, but it’s broken down the middle. The alien touches one half to the palm of Michael’s hand and the sides snap together like two opposite sides of a magnet, the crack vanishing and the sphere becoming perfect. 

The aliens erupt with different colors, some kind of conversation happening above Michael. 

There’s a flash of white light and Michael feels cold air against his sides. He twists his as much as he can under the thing on his forehead and sees that the seams of his clothes have been torn open. 

A hand-like appendage drifts over him, and Michael watches it pull away his clothes. The alien it’s attached to gives the pile of fabric over to another creature. 

Red streams of light flash over Michael’s body, and he sees a copy of himself above him made up of what looks like dust particles. The aliens touch it, manipulating it. As they trace lines down it, the dust particles open to show Michael’s organs, and he watches as blood travels through his veins, as his heart beats, as his lungs expand. 

More of the aliens come closer. They begin touching him everywhere, and their skin is smooth, but almost feels like it doesn’t fit, like there’s a gap between the skin and the tissues beneath. 

They take samples of his hair and fingernails, they even push something into his mouth and swab his cheek and cut the top of his arm, letting him bleed into a container that sloshes like it’s just as much a liquid as Michael’s blood. 

As the aliens stand over him, colored lights flashing slowly, Michael can only think. He’d always wanted to be abducted by aliens—he could see the universe, communicate with another species, and he’d always planned to be unlike the people whose stories he’d read, who were afraid and uninterested in actually doing any learning while with aliens, but as he watches a light travel down his body and the aliens spreading open the skin of his chest, all he wants is to go home. 

The alien that had held the strange glass sphere comes closer, holding something else in its tentacle. Michael watches at it comes closer and closer and closer to his chest. It looks like a faceted crystal, but there’s something dark inside it that shifts in the light, making Michael wonder if there’s something living inside the crystal. 

A noise bursts around them, somewhere between a roar of thunder and a sonic boom. The crystal lights up, the darkness inside it shining. The alien drops it, its tentacle twitching. 

The crystal burns when it collides with Michael’s flesh, and he’d struggle if he could move, but all he can do is lie in agony. 

He feels something brush against his insides, twisting between his ribs and coiling itself next to his heart. 

One of the other aliens thrusts a tentacle into his chest and roots around until it pulls out the crystal. The center has become a dull grey, and the aliens light up around him again. 

Michael stares at the crystal, the aliens and their tentacles that are coated in his blood. His heart beats a dull rhythm in his chest, but he can still feel something beside it. 

Whatever it is twists inside him again, and Michael manages to make a noise from the pain. 

The aliens return their attention back to him from the now-bloody crystal. One of them grabs a bowl from a nearby table and pours it out over Michael’s face. Whatever was in the bowl looks like smoke, but Michael feels the world going black around him, the darkness interrupted by the lights from the aliens. 

\--

Michael jerks awake, expecting to find his limbs still being held down, his clothes missing, alien creatures still standing over him and watching him, but when he looks around he only sees the outlines of his bedroom furniture. 

It’s almost pitch black apart from the light from his alarm clock, which reads 2:53 am. Michael sits up and turns on his bedside lamp. The sudden brightness makes him squint, but as his eyes adjust he can see that it’s definitely his room. 

He runs a hand over where his chest had been cut open but there’s no evidence of a wound or stitches, just his usual soft pajamas. He wonders if the feeling of something beside his heart is just his mind tricking him. 

Grabbing his phone, Michael checks what day it is. According to that, it’s been nine hours since he left work. 

He wonders if the abduction was all some kind of strange dream, but he can’t remember getting home, can’t even remember most of his drive home. 

Michael gets out of bed and starts to walk around, running his fingers over his dresser and bedside table, still unsure of whether or not it’s real. 

There’s no way Michael will be able to sleep now, not when he can’t be sure of what happened in the last twelve hours, if he dreamt it or just forgot everything he did after work. 

The rest of his apartment is dark, and nothing seems off about anything else. The packaging for a frozen meal he can’t remember eating is in the trash, and his usual dishes are on the drain rack.

In his living room, the book he was reading on trans-dimensional experiences is on his coffee table, but when he opens it to the marked page, he can’t remember reading that section. 

He checks on the anole lizards he keeps in a tank near his front door. They’re sleeping, which is normal, and there are still some crickets hopping around. It’s comforting to know Zhaan and D’Argo didn’t go hungry, but Michael feels sick and confused. 

At least looking at his lizards gives Michael some answers. He has a pill counter beside the tank with calcium powder in it, and one of the pre-measured doses he keeps in them is missing, even though there’s still a bag of powder—what Michael would have used if he’d fed them himself—beside the cage. He looks closer at the tank and notices there’s a white substance on some of the surfaces, which he thinks is the supplement. 

He claps his hands over his mouth before he can make any noise. It wasn’t aliens. He knows it. Aliens wouldn’t have fed his lizards, wouldn’t have tried to make him believe nothing had happened. 

It wasn’t aliens. 

It 

Wasn’t 

Aliens 

Michael sits on the floor, feeling the soft carpeting under his hands. Someone was in his home, aliens or humans or something else altogether. A part of him suspects the projects, but Marzanna is safely locked away and wouldn’t have done something like this. Incubus wouldn’t go after him without killing him, and there isn’t enough chaos for it to be Icarus or Lamia. 

But if not them, who  _ did  _ do this? 

Someone who has the resources to drug him, who could get into his house, who could create such a farce. 

Maybe he’d been right to not trust Supervisor Adams, to wonder what he’d done to get rid of Supervisor Friedkin. 

Michael gets up, goes to his bedroom. His phone is charging on his nightstand like always, facedown like always, but he remembers now. He’d been on the phone with Supervisor Adams when the noise had begun, when he saw the UFO on the horizon. 

Had Michael even left the base? Was that a hallucination? Was it all a hallucination? 

He considers tearing his phone apart, finding whatever they did to it, but they could be watching now, could always be watching him. Michael’s seen the footage from the cameras they’ve placed in the homes of former projects they’re surveilling, knows there’s nothing stopping them from doing the same to him. 

Michael doesn’t know much about the surveillance side of Blackwing, but he tries to guess where the cameras would be located.

Not that it helps. Blackwing has decades of surveillance experience and Michael knows nothing about it. Even if he could find one of the cameras, what would he do with it? He can’t stop them. Not even Icarus—a man led by the will of the universe itself—could stop Blackwing. 

Sitting down on his bed, Michael stares at his closet. He’s got a suitcase in there. If he packed up right now, maybe he could run, escape from all this, go and help Icarus or warn other projects that they’re being watched, find some place far outside the reach of Blackwing and live in peace. 

Travel isn’t a problem—he’s been saving up for a UFO convention and his passport’s still valid, but he knows that several of the former subjects are from foreign countries, as Blackwing is one of the best holding facilities in the world. Finding somewhere safe will take research, and that will take time. 

He glances at the clock. It’s now just before 4 am. If he tries to make his plans now, he’ll only have a few hours before Blackwing knows something is wrong. He’ll have to go into work and wait until tomorrow to avoid suspicion. 

Michael feels calmer, knowing that he has something like a plan now. 

Grabbing his laptop, he checks his social media accounts. He can hardly concentrate on his Twitter feed, but the Reddit tab he’s had open for a few days gives him an idea.

He only has to type in a few letters before his toolbar suggests the url for his favorite paranormal subreddit. Michael has only posted there once before, sharing the story of when he saw strange lights in the sky when he was a kid, how they’d moved so fast he couldn’t call his dad outside to see them as well before they’d vanished. It was a pretty standard experience, he knows that. He clicks on the  _ Create post _ button and starts typing: 

_ ‘I was abducted while leaving a government facility’  _

Michael tells the whole story, doing his best to remember it the way he knows he was supposed to, and hopes it’s good enough to fool Blackwing into thinking he believes it really happened. 

It’s nearly six when he finishes typing. Michael’s heart races as he posts it, his fingers trembling against the plastic of his mouse. 

Once it’s done, Michael gets ready for work, showering quickly and getting dressed before shoving a slice of bread that tastes like nothing into his mouth as he stares at his phone and waits for someone to break down his door. 

No one does. His house is almost eerily silent as Michael walks out the door. 

He checks his rear-view mirror constantly as he drives, looking for anyone who could be following him, but the drive into work is as quiet as always. The gate accepts his ID when he holds it under the barcode reader, and he parks in his usual spot. Other employees are milling about, and people are neither staring at him nor avoiding eye contact. Skylar from maintenance stops him just inside the building and asks if he wants to go out for drinks tonight with her and a few other coworkers. Michael says yes, knowing he won’t be there. 

It’s not until Michael gets to his desk that he remembers Supervisor Adams’ request for a meeting when Michael got to work. After booting up his computer, his hand moves toward his UFO lamp, to turn it on like usual, before he remembers that it’s in his house, mysteriously moved after the last time he saw it in the back seat of his car. 

Michael doesn’t let himself stare at where it had been, and makes himself stand up and go to Supervisor Adams’ office. 

The door is open, but Michael knocks on it just in case. “Sir?”

Supervisor Adams looks up from what he’s working on, his fingers pausing over his keyboard. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” he says. “Please come in, and close the door.” 

Michael does as he’s told and takes a seat. “You… asked me to come speak with you.” He feels like a disobedient child who has been called in to the principal’s office—not that he was ever  _ actually  _ called in to the principal’s office. 

Supervisor Adams closes his laptop and turns his attention to Michael, who tries not to gulp. If there’s anything that’s been made clear since the man took over Blackwing, it’s that Supervisor Adams is no fool. Michael keeps his face blank, hoping that, just once, Supervisor Adams can be outsmarted. 

“I’ve been looking over your file,” Supervisor Adams says. “I understand you were one of the first people brought in by Supervisor Friedkin.” 

“Yes, sir. I had been stationed under Major Simon Hahn, who worked with Supervisor Friedkin before he was appointed to Blackwing. I guess Supervisor Friedkin had asked if Major Hahn knew of anyone who would be interested in working for Blackwing and… he thought I would be a good fit.” 

“I can’t disagree,” Supervisor Adams comments. “However, I don’t believe we’ve utilized you to your fullest potential.” He opens a desk drawer and pulls out a file. Michael sees his name at the top of it. There’s something paperclipped to the front of the file, which Supervisor Adams pulls off and hands to Michael. 

Michael’s brain takes a minute to interpret the words on the paper. 

“I’m… being transferred?” 

“Please don’t think you’re being removed from the Blackwing program. We simply want to give you as many opportunities as possible to improve your skills, and we felt that moving you to the field surveillance team would mean you can grow further.” He smiles icily. “If you’d prefer, you can stay in your current position, or if you do choose to transfer and find it isn’t what you’d like to be doing, you can certainly transfer back.” 

Michael knows any answer is a risk. If he’s right, if everything that’s happened to him was planned by Supervisor Adams, then this is just some plan to manipulate him further. 

Maybe, just maybe, he can come out on top. 

“When will this be happening?”

“As soon as you’re able to. You may be gone for long periods at a time, so take the rest of the day off if you need to make arrangements. If you’d like, you can pack up your essentials and the rest of your belongings can be transported by us.”

Michael thinks of Zhaan and D’Argo. If he leaves, he doesn’t want them going hungry or getting sick because someone doesn’t know how to feed them. 

“Yes, sir.” 

He sits there for a moment before Supervisor Adams raises his eyebrows at him and Michael jumps to his feet. 

“T-Thank you, sir.” 

He leaves, feeling Supervisor Adams’ eyes on him. 

An hour later, Michael arrives at home with a box of everything that had been in his desk at work. Jeff, his manager, had asked for everything Michael had been working on, so that it could be finished by the rest of the team. Everyone was clearly sad—and surprised—that Michael was being transferred. 

Saying his goodbyes had been difficult, since Michael had no idea what he would do next, or if he’d even survive long enough to make a plan. 

He looks around his house and wonders where to start. 

Michael checks on D’Argo and Zhaan, and is relieved that both of them seem fine after their incorrect feeding. As he watches them move around their tank, he considers who he could ask to take them in. He doesn’t know many people who live in the area near the Blackwing compound but, in a stroke of luck, the first person he asks (a friend he met at the reptile shop where he bought his anoles) is able to adopt them. 

That done, he grabs the suitcase from his closet. He doesn’t know where his transfer will be to anymore than he knows where he’s running to, so Michael packs a variety of clothes, thinking more of usefulness than fashion; he can worry about color coordination when he’s safe. 

Once it’s zipped up, Michael sits on his bed. Supervisor Adams said that there would be someone at his house in the morning to take him to… wherever he was going. 

This is his chance. If he’s going to get away, he’ll have to leave now. Michael grabs his phone and searches for flights to Mexico, lets the page load, then leaves his phone on his bed. That should throw them off a little. 

He grabs his suitcase and rolls it out to his living room. He’ll have to ditch his car somewhere but he has to get somewhere before that can happen. 

Michael crouches by his Zhaan and D’Argo’s tank. 

“Bye,” he whispers to them. “Be good for Chris, okay? She’ll take good care of you.” 

He grabs his suitcase and car keys and opens his front door. 

Michael freezes before he even takes a step. 

Outside his house is a full containment team, and Mr. Priest is standing on his porch with a grin on his face. 

“Well hey there, Lieutenant,” he drawls. “Goin’ somewhere?” 

“I—I was…” 

Mr. Priest moves too fast for Michael to react. Smoke—it must be the knock-out gas they use on the subjects—pours from a nozzle that Mr. Priest is holding. 

The smoke seems to infect his senses, all he can smell and feel and taste and see and hear is the gas. 

\-- 

Michael wakes up coughing, and struggles to sit up. His eyes burn, and he rubs at them until the world comes into focus. 

At first, he doesn’t know where he is. 

He’s never been here, but as he looks around, Michael realizes what the room is. 

It’s a project holding cell. 

As if Michael needed more proof of this, he’s in a dark grey jumpsuit with a yellow band across the chest. On one side is a patch, the same kind of geometric design he’s seen on project files stitched onto it. His is a circle inside a square that seems to have been broken into pieces.

His mind sticks to the information that he’s a Blackwing project like a skipping record for a while, until an alarm goes off, the sound of voices outside the cell just barely audible. 

A red light flashes next to the door as it starts to open, and Michael pushes himself against the wall. 

The people who walk in are all familiar to him—Supervisor Adams, Mr Priest, several of the usual containment guards—but they could be strangers, or maybe Michael is the stranger now, since the guards are all pointing guns at him.  

“Hello, Vejovis,” Supervisor Adams says. “How are you feeling?” 

“Ve-Vejovis?” The room seems cold, even through the jumpsuit.   

Supervisor Adams smiles. “Mr Priest, please give Vejovis item R-115J.” 

Priest is grinning as he steps closer. Michael has seen him look the same in surveillance footage, when he’s about to cause a lot of pain. 

The man pulls on a pair of nitrile gloves and opens a black bag that’s been hanging at his hip. From it, he pulls a plastic container, which he hands to Michael. 

Michael hesitates, and Priest’s grin gets wider. 

“You know me, kid. You know it ain’t in your best interests to be stubborn.”

With trembling fingers, Michael reaches out and takes the container. 

“Open it,” Supervisor Adams says. 

Michael does so and looks in to find a small pile of broken glass at the bottom of the container. 

“What…” He looks up at them. “What is this?” 

“Touch it.” 

Michael swallows and touches one of the larger pieces, avoiding the sharp edges. The glass shifts, and the other pieces jump up to connect to the one he’s touching. Within a few seconds, the glass has reformed into a sphere. Michael picks it up, staring at the distorted image of his hand through the glass.

“How—” 

“We found a substance,” Supervisor Adams interrupts, “that we believe can cause abilities to manifest in those who come into contact with it.” 

Michael thinks back to the abduction, to the surgery, the weird crystal that they put inside him, the sphere that had been repaired when it touched his hand.

“You… You made me into… You can’t do this!”

“I’m afraid we can,” Supervisor Adams says. “It’s well within the scope of Blackwing to take in any subject that we feel could be useful for scientific research or whose abilities could be a danger to society.” 

“I wasn’t—I’ve never had any abilities!” 

The fake smile Supervisor Adams had been wearing vanishes. “You didn’t, but we couldn’t take that risk.” He pulls his phone out and turns it around so Michael can see the screen. There’s a photo showing of the crystal, surrounded by what looks like shards of the same material. 

“Why are you showing me…” 

Michael thinks back to a few days ago. He’d been waiting to talk to Supervisor Adams’ secretary, Sasha. She was away from her desk and Michael had seen similar shards in a container at the corner of her desk. He hadn’t thought about the shards hurting him, he just wanted to know what they were. He’d picked one up from the container, only for a second, just to take a look. Sasha asked if he’d touched them when she came back and Michael had said no, but clearly someone had seen it. 

“It seems you remember now,” Supervisor Adams says. “We hadn’t intended for this to happen, but once you came into contact with it, we didn’t have any other choice.” 

“Then why did you fake that alien abduction!? Did you think I was so stupid that I’d—”

“We needed a way to surreptitiously test whether or not you had manifested any abilities, so we had to expose you to extreme stress.” 

Michael closes his hand around the glass, clenching his fist so hard it hurts. The glass cracks and repairs itself repeatedly in his grip. 

“I understand this is difficult for you.” 

“Difficult!?” 

Michael moves to throw the glass sphere at Supervisor Adams, but Mr. Priest has his gun pointed at Michael before he can even loosen his grip. The guards standing beside Supervisor Adams have also aimed their weapons at him. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Priest drawls. “Just ‘cause you’re a new project don’t mean we won’t end you if we have to.” 

“You clearly need some time to adjust to your new circumstances,” Supervisor Adams says. “We’ll be back in a few days to see if you feel like cooperating.” 

He steps back, his guards moving out of his way without lowering their weapons. 

“Priest,” Supervisor Adams says from the hallway. 

“See ya, kiddo,” Priest says, smirking. “Have fun.” 

He holsters his gun and walks out, the other guards following him. 

The alarm sounds as the doors close, and Michael is left on his own. 

He throws the glass sphere at the door, watching the shards fall to the floor, and curls up on the bed. 

\--

Supervisor Adams isn’t lying. Michael doesn’t see another soul for days—or he thinks it’s been days. He gets food at regular intervals, but there’s no other way to measure time. 

At some point, Michael touches the glass on the floor and watches it repair. It becomes a kind of entertainment, seeing how it reforms. Michael tries putting things between the pieces, but they dodge the obstacles and connect. 

He’s in the middle of trying to wrap the sleeve of his jumpsuit around a piece of glass without actually touching the glass itself when he hears something outside.

Thinking it’s food being brought to him, Michael pulls his jumpsuit back on correctly, but the alarm sounds and the door opens. Priest stands there, a few guards behind him. 

“What’s going on?” Michael asks. 

Priest smiles and strides forward. Michael doesn’t think to dodge or back away, and almost before he knows it, Priest is grabbing his arms and pulling Michael to his feet. 

“Now, I know you’re just learnin’, but you ain’t a guest here, Vejovis. When we walk in, you stand up and hold your arms out, or we might think you’re tryin’ to attack us and have to subdue you, and I’m tellin’ you now that you don’t want us to do that.” 

Michael stares at him, his shoulders falling, and Priest shakes his arms roughly. 

“And when someone speaks to you, you answer, understand?” 

“Y-Yes.” 

“Yes, sir.” Priest gives him another shake. 

“Yes, sir,” Michael repeats. 

Priest laughs at him and drags him out of the room, a pair of guards on either side of them. He’s brought to a room that he’s been in before, the machine that drops balls into numbered slots is something he helped to set up when he first started working for Blackwing. He remembers watching Icarus in the chair, but Michael’s never been strapped into the chair before. 

“Now, you know how this works,” Priest says. “Get the number right and you’ll be fine. Get them wrong and…” 

He hits a button and electricity courses through Michael’s body, making him yelp. 

“Have fun.” 

Michael watches Priest leave the room, not hearing the machine click on and the first ball falling. A buzzer sounds, and Michael is electrocuted. 

His muscles spasming, Michael looks back at the machine as a second ball is dropped. 

“F-Four.” 

It lands in the first slot, and Michael whimpers as he’s electrocuted yet again. 

—

Michael only gets about half of the numbers correct, and by the end of testing he’s hardly able to walk as he’s brought back to his cell. 

Every day after that is filled with testing. Sometimes it’s things he remembers watching Icarus go through, but some of the tests are more tailored to Michael, like the one in which the same three items are repaired by him and broken. That test seems to go on for days. Michael thinks they’re seeing if he expends energy after fixing things, but he’s exhausted from no food or sleep, so he wonders if the results really have a point. 

He begins to lose hope after what feels like a month of captivity. Supervisor Adams hasn’t been in to speak with him again, and Michael doesn’t recognize anyone who collects him for testing other than Mr. Priest. 

His glass sphere is the only entertainment Michael has when he’s alone, with no one to talk to and nothing else to do other than listening to the sounds outside his door and waiting for testing to begin. 

Which is why Michael is confused one day when the door shifts without the alarms going off. Michael stands up, watching the door open. 

It isn’t Supervisor Adams, or Mr. Priest. 

“M-Marzanna?” Michael says, looking at the woman standing before him as he backs away from her. 

Marzanna cocks her head as she closes the door behind her. “How d’you know my name? Aren’t you new?” 

Michael shrugs. “Sort of.” 

“What’s your name?” 

Michael wonders if there’s a point in saying his real name, but it can’t hurt to tell it to Marzanna. “I’m Michael, but they called me Vejovis.”

“You can call me Bart if you wanna,” Marzanna—no, Bart—says. 

“Okay… Bart. You can call me Michael.” 

She smiles. “Haven’t had anyone to talk to in forever. Mr. Priest used to hang out with me last time but he doesn’t now, and Ken’s all big business so he can’t. Do you… wanna hang out?” 

Michael glances at the door. “I don’t think we’re supposed to.” 

“Well if the universe let me come in here it means I  _ am  _ s’posed to.” 

Michael has a vague memory of Marzanna getting out of her room a few times and wandering the facility, but she’d always been stopped by Supervisor Adams or Priest when she had. This time, no one seems to have noticed. 

“Do you… do you think we could escape?” he asks, his voice hardly above a whisper. 

Bart glaces at the door behind her and starts chewing her fingernails. “I jus’ make thins worse ou’ there,” she says, her words muffled by her fingers. “I tried goin’ ta Wendimoor but I just made it bad.” 

Michael read the report after the compound was attacked by knights. Apparently there was an entire alternate universe created by Moloch, which was thrown into chaos by him being in a coma for so long. Bart and Icarus had both apparently gone there, and Icarus had taken Moloch in the process. 

“But you’re here right now,” Michael says. “Doesn’t that mean the universe wanted you to talk to me?” 

Bart stares at the ground. “I dunno.”

Michael wants to push her. To make her let him out so he can run, but Bart is just as trapped as he is and, unlike Michael, is used like a chess piece by the will of the universe.

“You don’t have to answer now,” Michael forces himself to say. “But if you ever want to get out of here, I’ll do what I can to help.” 

Bart bites her lip and looks at Michael for a moment, then turns around and pulls on the door. It opens, again without the alarm going off. 

“I guess it wants us to go,” Bart says. “You comin’?” she asks when Michael doesn’t move. 

“You’re sure?” 

She shrugs. “Dunno, but it’s still boring here.”

Michael grabs his glass sphere and follows her out of the room. 

“You know how to get outta here?” Bart says. 

Michael nods. He walked these hallways every day not too long ago, and as he leads Bart through the twisting corridors, he’s reminded of when the knights had invaded and he’d had to lead Icarus around. This is even more nerve wracking, knowing that if they fail to escape, the rest of his life will be nothing but testing and torture. 

Bart grabs his arm just as Michael is about to turn a corner, pulling him backwards.

“What—” he starts to say, but then he hears voices nearby. 

“We don’t know what happened, sir. It just cut out,” someone says, their voice accompanied by hurried footsteps.

“Fix it. Now.” Michael recognizes Supervisor Adams’ voice, and judging by how her shoulders hunch slightly, Bart does as well. “Every second the cameras are down, we’re at risk.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The footsteps get further and further away. 

“I think they’re gone,” Michael says. 

“Yeah…” Bart turns around to talk back to where they came from. She stops in front of a door and points at it. “I think we need something from in here though.” 

Michael follows her. He hadn’t noticed the door before, but as he looks at it, Michael realizes how strange it is. 

Instead of the usual simple, geometric lineart, the door has a solid Mandelbrot set painted on it. 

“Is this another project?” Michael asks. 

“Dunno.” 

Bart touches the door and it opens, revealing the room. 

A man is standing just inside the door like he was about to enter the hallway. He isn’t wearing the usual jumpsuit, but a black button-up shirt and black trousers. 

“Supervisor Friedkin?” 

Supervisor Friedkin looks at Michael when he speaks, and Michael takes an instinctive step back when he sees that the man’s eyes have changed from what he remembers. They’re shaped exactly like the design on the door, and blood red. 

“Hi.” 

“Who’s this guy?” Bart asks. “Why’s he look so weird?” 

“It’s not like it’s my fault,” Supervisor Friedkin answers, looking offended. “Ken pushed me into this… thing. And then I went to this weird place and now my brain’s all like…” He makes a noise like an explosion, his hands doing a bursting motion by his head. 

“You know Ken?” Bart’s smiling, as if she hasn’t been imprisoned by the man for months. 

Michael wonders why she was led to this room, and what Supervisor Friedkin is doing here after having disappeared. 

“The universe wanted you to come here so you can let me out,” Friedkin says. “And I’m here ‘cause I woke up outside the weird place a couple of days ago. Ken got all mad at me and Mr. Priest was there.” He looks at Bart. “His face looks a lot worse in person than it did when I could see him from… there. Panto Trost misses you though, and he wonders if you’re doing okay.” 

Bart’s mouth falls open. 

“I don’t know Panto. I’ve just seen him from…” Friedkin trails off, and points at his eyes. “Somehow I see him. I don’t know how.”

“I… I didn’t say—” Bart looks at Michael in confusion. 

Friedkin shrugs. “I guess I can hear thoughts now or something.” 

“Why should we bring you with us?” Michael demands.

“We gotta.” Bart is staring at Friedkin. “I gotta.” 

Friedkin looks to their left. “We need to go.” 

Before he even finishes speaking, an alarm starts to blare, red lights flashing in the hallway. They all start to run down the hallway, but a pair of metal doors emerges from the walls and starts to close. 

“Shit!” Michael turns around. There aren’t any doors closing behind them, but he can see shadows moving along the wall—guards coming to stop them. 

“I can’t kill ‘em.” Bart stares at her hands. “I’m not s’posed to kill ‘em.” 

The guards come around the corner, and the three of them back up towards the metal doors as guns are raised in their direction. 

“Put your hands up,” a guard commands. “You have three seconds to comply. We have been authorized to use lethal force. Three…”

Bart turns around and tries to pull the doors open, but they don’t budge. 

“Two…” 

Michael hears the guards shifting, getting ready to fire at them. 

“We need to go,” Friedkin says again, and grabs Michael and Bart by the hand. 

“One.” 

The guards begin to fire, their guns bursting to life like a thunderstorm. Michael squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for bullets to tear through him, but they never come.

He opens his eyes and sees black smoke around them. It dissipates, revealing a grassy meadow and a night sky.

Friedkin is still holding his and Bart’s hands, but he lets go after a minute. 

“What happened?” Bart asks. 

Friedkin looks at his hands and cocks his head like he’s listening for something. 

“You can teleport?” Michael asks him. 

“Yeah?” 

“Why didn’t you do it earlier!? Why were you even  _ in _ Blackwing!?” 

Friedkin pouts at him. “I didn’t, like,  _ know  _ that I could teleport. It told me to grab you guys so I did and then we were here.” 

“Why are you mad at him?” Bart asks Michael. “We’re not dead or anything.” 

Michael shakes his head. “Where are we?” he asks. 

Friedkin points at a cluster of lights near the horizon. “That’s Blackwing over there.” 

It looks far away, but Michael knows if they stay here they’ll be found. “Well, now what?” 

“That way,” Bart and Friedkin both say, pointing to the right. 

Michael looks to their left and sees the road he used to take to get to work. He would have guessed that was their best bet, but who is he to argue with two people who are in some kind of communication with the universe itself? 

“I’m not in communication with the universe, it just tells me what to do,” Friedkin says, already walking in the direction he’d pointed. 

Michael glares but follows him and Bart. 

“So you can read minds and teleport. Anything else we should know?” 

Friedkin looks at the sky for a moment, not watching his feet even though there are several large stones that he could easily trip over as he walks down the hill. “There are aliens out there,” he replies. “94% of the abduction stories you’ve read are fake, but what you saw as a kid was aliens. And your anole lizards are doing fine. Chris takes good care of them.” 

Michael gapes at him. 

“How… how did you know?” 

Red eyes are turned towards him. “I see things, when I look. Answers. Questions. Pasts. Presents.” 

“What about… what about futures?” 

Friedkin shakes his head. 

“What about Panto?” Bart asks. “He wasn’t… When I left he was…” 

“Francis—Moloch—The boy—” Friedkin squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head like he’s clearing it. “He fixed things. Undid all the killing and fixed Wendimoor. Panto Trost and Silas Dengdamoor were brought back to life. And their families too.” 

Bart smiles at that. 

They walk in silence until the sky starts to get light and the sun begins to appear over the distant mountains. 

By this time, they’ve reached a road, and Michael’s feet are throbbing in the soft soled shoes he’s wearing. 

Friedkin stops and looks down the road. 

“What is it?” 

“They’ll be here soon,” he says. “But uh. They won’t be too happy.” 

“Who?” 

“The Rowdy 3.” Friedkin nods and Michael follows his gaze. There’s a black dot that’s moving along the road. 

“Who’s that?” Bart sits on the road and watches the vehicle get closer. 

“You met them, like, right before you left Blackwing the first time.” 

“Those four guys? They’re nice.” 

“Incubus?” 

“Don’t… Don’t call them that, it’ll just make them angry,” Friedkin tells him. His eyes are wide, and Michael thinks he sees some of the black smoke from before gathering around his shoulders like he wants to teleport away but can’t. 

The black dot gets close enough for Michael to see it’s actually the panel van that Blackwing had confiscated when they captured Incubus (and that disappeared soon after Supervisor Adams took over Blackwing). Michael notices that over the growl of the engine, he can hear a pounding bass beat. Bart, grinning from where she’s sitting on the ground, bounces to the rhythm of it. Friedkin is pale, his mouth twisted with uncertainty. 

Finally, the van pulls up beside them on the road. One of the doors opens to reveal a young woman in a grey leather jacket, and three of the members of Incubus. The front passenger window opens and another woman—this one wearing sunglasses and a red bandana over her colorful hair—stares at them. 

“Who you?” she asks. “Who you?” 

The woman in the back of the van steps out. Friedkin takes a half step backwards as the three members of Incubus follow her, each of them carrying some kind of weapon. 

She crosses her arms and the men stand behind her, all of them watching Friedkin. 

“You know,” she says, “when I was told to gather the tools, I didn’t think they’d be Blackwing tools.” 

“H-Hello, Miss Brotzman,” Friedkin says to her. 

Incubus 1 steps out of the van, having climbed out from the front seat, and bears his teeth at Friedkin. “Well, if this ain’t a fine thing,” he says. “Drummer said we’d get to see you again sometime. I was gettin’ a bit impatient about it.” 

“We should smash him!” Incubus 4 shouts. 

“See how he likes being put in a cage,” Incubus 3 adds. 

“Boys,” the young woman says, and the four of them quiet down, gathering closer to her like tamed wolves. She looks at Michael. “You worked for Blackwing too,” she says. 

Michael nods. 

“I didn’t!” Bart jumps to her feet. 

“Well hey there kiddo,” Incubus 1 looks at her. “Long time no see.” 

“We haven’t seen you in 6,124 days,” Incubus 2 says. 

Bart beams at them. 

Brotzman steps closer to Friedkin, ignoring how the members of Incubus are talking to Bart about how much she’s grown since they last saw each other. “Why are we supposed to take you with us?”

“B-Because… I can see things. I know where the others are.” 

She turns around to look at Incubus. They glance back at her, each one nodding slightly. Brotzman turns back around and punches Friedkin in the face. 

Michael notices that Friedkin was flinching before she even turned around. 

“Fine. You guys come with us, but touch my boys and I’ll kill you myself. Understand?” 

“Y-Yes, ma’am,” Friedkin answers, sheepishly. 

She glances at Michael. “That goes for you too.” 

Michael nods. 

Brotzman gets back into the van and they all follow her, Bart chattering at Incubus about her friend Panto and jumping up and down when they say they met his boyfriend in Wendimoor. 

Michael sits on the floor of the van, looking out the windshield as the engine starts and rumbles back into motion. He hadn’t expected this for his life, had thought that someday he’d find the truth about the universe and the other inhabitants in it. Instead he’s in a van with some of the strangest humans he could ever imagine. 

“We’ll be fine,” Friedkin says to him, but he doesn’t look as sure as he has with everything else he’s told Michael, like he’s trying to convince himself rather than being a voice for the universe itself. 

There’s a quiet rattling beside him, and Michael touches the door gently. The rattling stops after a second as the door is fixed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "It's an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem."
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> [Find me on tumblr!](lourdesdeath.tumblr.com)


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